Read Online 30 Great Myths about Shakespeare by Laurie Maguire, Emma Smith - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Laurie Maguire, Emma Smith
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heed.
Notes
1 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams , trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: George Allen & Unwin/Hogarth Press, 1965), p. 299.
2 John Caird, in Michael Billington (ed.), Directors' Approaches to “Twelfth Night” (London: Nick Hern Books, 1990), p. 40.
3 Ibid.
4 Augustine, Confessions , ed. R.S. Pine-Coffin (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), p. 76.
5 Christopher Rush, Will (London: Beautiful Books, 2007), p. 10.
6 Peter Ackroyd, Shakespeare: The Biography (London: Vintage, 2006), p. 82.
Myth 14
Shakespeare was a Stratford playwright
Shakespeare is to Stratford-upon-Avon what Juliet is to Verona. Just as you can visit Juliet's balcony in Verona (see Myth 5), so you can visit the house in which Shakespeare was born, the houses in which his mother and grandmother were born, the school he probably attended, and the church in which he was baptized and buried. The difference is that Juliet is a fictional character and her balcony a product of the Veronese tourist industry. (The tourist industry is not entirely self-serving; here it caters to the desires of all those who wish a fictional character to have been real, the adult equivalent of children wanting their toys to come alive at night.) But Shakespeare really lived. He and his family have a tangible material presence in the parish and legal records of Stratford.
The medieval market town of Stratford (current population 25,000) has a thriving tourist trade thanks to its Renaissance playwright. There are six Shakespeare properties to visit plus a theater company dedicated in name and practice to staging his works. It is ironic to think that when an annual Shakespeare festival was first mooted in the nineteenth century, the initial response was an incredulous, “Who would want to visit a small Warwickshire market town?” 1 Today the answer to that question is: 3 million people each year.
Shakespeare left Stratford sometime in the late 1580s. How frequently he returned to visit his wife and three children, whether he was able to attend the funeral of his son Hamnet in 1596 or that of his mother in 1608, is not documented. But he obviously continued to support his family; he was involved in Stratford investments or actions in 1598 (when his Stratford friend Richard Quiney wrote to him and visited him in London), in 1605 (when he bought a share in tithes) and 1611 (when he was one of seventy citizens petitioning parliament for the improvement of the roads); he invested in Stratford property in 1597 (New Place) and 1602 (107 acres in Old Town plus a cottage in Chapel Lane), retiring to Stratford (or commuting from Stratford) sometime from 1608 onwards (in a London court case in 1612 he gave his address as Stratford-upon-Avon).
Stratford, its inhabitants, and its language make appearances in Shakespeare's plays. One of his earliest plays, The Taming of the Shrew , opens with a drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, whose experiences are rooted in Warwickshire. In a dispute about his ancestry, he calls for support from a neighbor: “Ask Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot if she know me not” (Induction 2.20–1; Wincot is a village four miles outside Stratford). Later in his career, Shakespeare uses Warwickshire dialect. In Coriolanus (1608) a character admires the destructive capacities of Coriolanus' son. She describes the cat-and-mouse game the young boy played with a butterfly, catching it and letting it go, before finally tearing it to pieces with his teeth. “I warrant how he mammocked it” she says approvingly (1.3.67). “Mammock” is a Warwickshire noun meaning a torn remnant; Shakespeare converts it to a verb: to tear something to shreds.
The sixteenth century saw the expansion of the English language as humanist scholars, translating and editing classical texts, imported Greek and Latin words to the English language (see Myth 21). Sir Thomas More gave us Latin-derived words such as lunatic ; Francis Bacon, a scientist,
Notes
1 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams , trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: George Allen & Unwin/Hogarth Press, 1965), p. 299.
2 John Caird, in Michael Billington (ed.), Directors' Approaches to “Twelfth Night” (London: Nick Hern Books, 1990), p. 40.
3 Ibid.
4 Augustine, Confessions , ed. R.S. Pine-Coffin (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), p. 76.
5 Christopher Rush, Will (London: Beautiful Books, 2007), p. 10.
6 Peter Ackroyd, Shakespeare: The Biography (London: Vintage, 2006), p. 82.
Myth 14
Shakespeare was a Stratford playwright
Shakespeare is to Stratford-upon-Avon what Juliet is to Verona. Just as you can visit Juliet's balcony in Verona (see Myth 5), so you can visit the house in which Shakespeare was born, the houses in which his mother and grandmother were born, the school he probably attended, and the church in which he was baptized and buried. The difference is that Juliet is a fictional character and her balcony a product of the Veronese tourist industry. (The tourist industry is not entirely self-serving; here it caters to the desires of all those who wish a fictional character to have been real, the adult equivalent of children wanting their toys to come alive at night.) But Shakespeare really lived. He and his family have a tangible material presence in the parish and legal records of Stratford.
The medieval market town of Stratford (current population 25,000) has a thriving tourist trade thanks to its Renaissance playwright. There are six Shakespeare properties to visit plus a theater company dedicated in name and practice to staging his works. It is ironic to think that when an annual Shakespeare festival was first mooted in the nineteenth century, the initial response was an incredulous, “Who would want to visit a small Warwickshire market town?” 1 Today the answer to that question is: 3 million people each year.
Shakespeare left Stratford sometime in the late 1580s. How frequently he returned to visit his wife and three children, whether he was able to attend the funeral of his son Hamnet in 1596 or that of his mother in 1608, is not documented. But he obviously continued to support his family; he was involved in Stratford investments or actions in 1598 (when his Stratford friend Richard Quiney wrote to him and visited him in London), in 1605 (when he bought a share in tithes) and 1611 (when he was one of seventy citizens petitioning parliament for the improvement of the roads); he invested in Stratford property in 1597 (New Place) and 1602 (107 acres in Old Town plus a cottage in Chapel Lane), retiring to Stratford (or commuting from Stratford) sometime from 1608 onwards (in a London court case in 1612 he gave his address as Stratford-upon-Avon).
Stratford, its inhabitants, and its language make appearances in Shakespeare's plays. One of his earliest plays, The Taming of the Shrew , opens with a drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, whose experiences are rooted in Warwickshire. In a dispute about his ancestry, he calls for support from a neighbor: “Ask Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot if she know me not” (Induction 2.20–1; Wincot is a village four miles outside Stratford). Later in his career, Shakespeare uses Warwickshire dialect. In Coriolanus (1608) a character admires the destructive capacities of Coriolanus' son. She describes the cat-and-mouse game the young boy played with a butterfly, catching it and letting it go, before finally tearing it to pieces with his teeth. “I warrant how he mammocked it” she says approvingly (1.3.67). “Mammock” is a Warwickshire noun meaning a torn remnant; Shakespeare converts it to a verb: to tear something to shreds.
The sixteenth century saw the expansion of the English language as humanist scholars, translating and editing classical texts, imported Greek and Latin words to the English language (see Myth 21). Sir Thomas More gave us Latin-derived words such as lunatic ; Francis Bacon, a scientist,
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